


The Honeymoon

by Flora (florahart)



Category: The Proposal (2009)
Genre: AI hologram, Andrew's Grandma rocks, F/M, OFC - Freeform, Space AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/Flora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Margaret's work is important, and the folks running the station just don't understand.  Fortunately, Andrew has a solution.  It's just a terrible idea, is all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Honeymoon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silveronthetree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveronthetree/gifts).



> I am so sorry this went out to a pinch hit at the last second, but upside, you get two gifts? It's a long and stupid story why that happened, and it's TOTALLY my fault. So. I hope this catches what you liked about this flick and these characters. As it's AU, other characters mostly went away, but Andrew's grandmother/Betty White had to be there, and so, there she is.

It had to be a software issue, Margaret was pretty sure. She lifted her hand to rub at her eyes, then shook her head when she remembered the gravline made that, if not impossible, at least frustrating to attempt. Pressure would make her eyesight fuzzy and mess up the moisture of the eyeball, and it would take forever to come back to normal. Forever that she really didn't want to take right now. She set her hand back down and blinked her eyes clearer instead, 

It didn't really help, but she wasn't ready to call it a day. The circuits and contact medium looked good and the hardware design was clean, so it had to be code, right? She scrolled to the top and started reading again, line by line, muttering each loop and phrase aloud in case her ears heard the error where her eyes didn't see it.

When she got to the end, with no more sense of what was frying the organics in the sims than when she'd started, she sighed and closed the file. Fine, it was past time to sleep, and besides, getting back into normal gravity would probably help clear her head. She stood, sketching a finger pattern over the digisens to opaque the component case while she was out, and turned to the door.

Her feet, swollen from ankles to toes from too many hours stuck under the gravline, ached, the skin feeling like it could split, but it was only a couple of yards to the door, and experience told her it would only take a few minutes for her circulatory system to get its shit together once she was on the other side. It wasn't as though she was going to make a complaint about the working conditions; she was at least four hours past max approved pod time tonight, and while Andrew wouldn't tell on her, not if he valued his job, a complaint would generate a review, and ugh, then they'd probably lock her out at six every day or some damn thing. She staggered the couple of yards, taking advantage of her unweighted spine to twist and pop her back as she walked, then stepped into normal gravity on the other side and headed for her quarters. Her feet hated this side of the line, too, so she stepped gingerly, ignoring the grinding sensation inside each heel. 

Fine, maybe she'd pushed. So she'd put her feet up once she was in her quarters and away from anyone else needing to see; she had her reasons and when she figured out the glitch, it would be clear to everyone why she kept the hours she did.

Behind her, Andrew, who had looked up as she passed the switch point, went in to tidy her notes and leave any correspondence he thought she should see. She ignored him; he was just doing his job, and now that she was back in normal-g, she knew her stomach would settle and she'd be hungry in five minutes. God, he'd better have set her up a plate before going back to do whatever he did while he was waiting; she really didn't want to have to find something for herself and then wait for it to heat..

Well, if not, she knew where to find him. She took the left into block six and ran two fingers down the sensor strip to unlock the door.

\--

Andrew watched her stand and stretch and then, when he was sure she was actually leaving, clicked send on the textburst to Kate, the PA for the team in tube six doing work on some kind of low-g recreation system. Not that it was Kate's job to deal with the care and feeding of Margaret, but she was willing, and it meant Andrew didn't have to choose between being in her room to tear the tab on her meal and being where he could see what time she actually chose to leave. Which might be anywhere between one and three--four, today--hours past the expected time. Or sometime midday, leading to a return in the evening, leading to an unannounced late night, leading to an overall increase in his urge to do something drastic. He wasn't the type to actually swat anyone upside the head, but he had a fairly rich and detailed fantasy involving swatting Margaret.

Anyway, either choice was likely to cause uproar, because she did require his presence immediately available to her while she was working the math and tweaking the design, not that she ever let him do any coding or for that matter anything else more meaningful than proofreading her supply orders, but she also did require that her meals be ready and waiting, piping hot or chilled as appropriate, the instant she walked in the door.

Thank God for Kate. 

He waited for the pingback that acknowledged receipt, then stood and let Margaret pass before he gritted his teeth and went into her lab to deal with her scattered notes and arrange critical tasks for the morning.

And, while he was at it, leave his thoughts on whatever the problem of the day was. He knew she'd never give him an instant of credit for his contributions to the project, but still, he couldn't not put in his two cents. And maybe eventually it would pay off, right?

At least he was eighteen months in. Two years would generate an automatic review at HQ, and he _knew_ the last three associates assigned to Margaret had never made it to a year, much less two; scuttlebutt was that he would get a plum assignment out of making it to 24 months. And yeah, it wasn't like his family didn't have ways to get him and assignment he wanted, but taking something from them now would just undermine a decade of working toward independence, damn it. He just had to stick it out.

Plus, okay, she did have her reasons for being a pain in the ass. He knew women engineers, much less women biomedical engineers on the verge of the kind of machinery Margaret was working on, had a tough time. He knew he had an easier time in a lot of ways, just by virtue of his Y chromosome, and while it was shitty of her to take it out on everyone, still, he kind of understood. Mostly. Being told who you were allowed to be sucked.

He flipped through the logs and her notes, then highlighted a line in the code and inserted a comment. _Logs indicate something hangs here_ , it said. He thought about whether he had a solid guess at a solution. He might, if she didn't opaque the box every time she left the room; he had access to the plans, but she'd been up here tweaking the hardware and the interface medium in zero-g for eight solid months. She'd made a ton of changes, and even with notes, it was a little hard to visualize all of it from scratch.

Finally, he shrugged and finished arranging actual correspondence and tidying the notes, cleaning up detritus on the desk and refilling the various supplies she used every day. It took a couple of hours, so that wasn't _so_ bad, but even so, his feet were aching by the time he went back into the main bubble. He really didn't know how she maintained the schedule she did.

He got a ping from Margaret not two seconds after he'd put his feet up for the night, and he sighed. 

She wanted a snack and a newspaper, and she wanted them delivered, now. How someone so good with every other aspect of technology needed someone to download today's paper for her was a mystery, but hell, she'd probably never thought of doing it herself, not when she had a perfectly capable minion available every second of every day. 

He spent five seconds with the swatting fantasy before starting to key a response as he shoved his feet back into his shoes.

\--

"What the hell, Andrew?" Margaret's screech through the intercom into the tiny assistant's lab was loud enough Andrew was pretty sure the people in tube ten had heard it, sound not traveling in space notwithstanding. He stood and palmed open the door to the test bay.

"Yes?"

"I have sims to run, and there are only two production boards ready!"

"That's because the station has a limited supply of boards and no one available to make up more from scratch. Ship's due up at noon local, and I'll meet the incoming shipment then. You'll have more by one unless something delays docking."

"Well, why aren't _you_ making more? You're qualified! Why did I hire you if you weren't qualified! Honestly, it's obvious I'd need this, and if you paid any attention at all you'd have taken care of it."

"I did take care of it. I ordered more. As for making boards, I'd be happy to do that, but you've indicated you need me available to you at any time." Andrew paused and forced the tension out of his jaw-- _six more months, six more months…_ \-- then went on. "Manual manufacture has to be done start to finish in a sealed environment that can't be fudged, and it takes a good five or six hours if there are no mechanical hiccups." He knew from her point of view he probably looked and sounded petty, but there was really no good solution, not when she required his presence all the time. He'd ordered when she was down to forty, and the supply chain had been delayed by a single shipment, was all.

"Well, then go start!"

"Six hours from now is after the ship docks. You'd be waiting longer--double the time, actually, maybe more."

She growled in frustration, and Andrew leaned against the jamb and waited for her to yell at him and then notice he was right. The weird sensation of the field keeping her lab workspace outside the influence of gravity hummed just in front of his nose. Unsurprisingly, she keyed a couple more lines of sequencing code, then whirled. "You know, if you'd just done it last night while I was asleep, I wouldn't have to wait."

Andrew didn't bother explaining that he only got to sleep when she did (pointless) and that also, the number of nights since they'd come up in which she had left him to sleep for six entire hours in a row could be counted on one hand. In eight months. "Sorry," he said. "I'll be sure to meet the shipment and expedite."

"You do that."

Margaret turned back to her terminal, muttering, and Andrew looked up at the overhead displays of the schematics and failed trials on the left and the chemical sequence on the right.

"You know, I think maybe the acids are firing too early," he said, pointing, his finger zapping the field. "See how you have feathering on the lip there?" 

She looked up and scowled. "Why are you still here? Are you trying to horn in on--"

"Nope, just offering fresh eyes," he said. "Three hours to the shipment, so I have time."

She shook her head and walked toward him, slowly because of the field differential. "Go. Meet. The ship." She slammed her hand down on the door and nodded when he jumped back--not that the field would have hurt him, exactly, but getting it full in the face as the door moved it back wasn't that fun.

\--

The buzzer started quiet, but by the time Margaret got to it, staggering and half-awake, it had ramped up to blaring. She slapped at the panel until it stopped, then squinted at the time.

3:17 a.m. local, and what the hell? She blinked the sleep back and went to pull on a robe and wake up Andrew to see why this message hadn't gone to his cabin in the first place.

Ugh. And she'd been really deeply asleep, too, for the first time in weeks and after a long day with a lot of progress.

He opened the door to his quarters in boxers and a faded red t-shirt, with a scowl on his face. "Seriously? Quarter after three? Again?"

"What do you mean, again?"

He let his head fall to one side in an expression of disbelief. "I mean, you know, _again_? Because this is the ninety-second time since we've been up here that you've woken me up between two and four, so I think 'again' is the appropriate word. What word would you use?"

" _Assistant_ ," she said. All right, maybe snapped. "And what I want to know is, why am _I_ getting mail at this hour? That's _your_ job."

Andrew stared at her for a minute, then shook his head. "Not really, but fine, so you didn't turn off your contact alerts and now you're up. What's the mail about?"

"I don't _know_ , because _my assistant_ hasn't opened it yet."

She was pretty sure he muttered _unbelievable_ as he pushed past her into the corridor in his underwear. Well, fine; it wasn't her fault he'd been raised in some kind of nudist barn. She hurried after him and followed him into her quarters.

"Well?"

He looked at her screens for a few seconds. "Well, it's addressed to you, personally, not you, the working entity. So I guess that means it's for you to open. Want me to leave?"

"What? No!"

"Well, but it could be personal. I'm just sayi--"

"Opening my mail is part of your job. So open it."

Andrew looked for a minute like he might refuse, but he came to his senses. "Fine. It needs your thumb, though. Because, like I said, you personally."

Which was completely ridiculous, of course, but obviously they were not getting any younger while he enforced rules no one else knew about, and also it was probably faster than making him override whatever silly restrictions there might actually be, so Margaret pressed her thumb to the glass and stepped back.

He leaned forward to read. "Uh."

"Uh? What uh?"

"Uh, it's an eviction notice." Andrew glanced over his shoulder at her. "It's an eviction notice because apparently you signed a 245-day lease up here, which expired on Thursday. What the hell?"

"What? It hasn't been 245 days!"

Andrew stood and turned to face her. "Okay, so the grant is through the end of the year. Why would you sign a shorter lease than that?"

"Why would you _let_ me? And it hasn't been 245 days."

"Says here the start date..." Andrew ticked off months on his fingers. "Hate to tell you, but it has. And I didn't _let_ you. In order to _let_ you, I would have to A, have control over anything you do and B, know about it."

"But I'm nearly done! I can't start again! What are the options!"

"I'm not a lawyer, but I don't know if you have any. It says they're awaiting the swift return of the facility to its pre-occupancy position because they have a new tenant waiting to come up." He flipped to another screen and reviewed the status of the base. "Every single lab up here is in use, so I guess I believe them they're at capacity."

"They can't be! And how can it have been--"

Andrew folded his arms over his t-shirt front. "Margaret."

"I thought we agreed you were calling me Miss Tate."

"Miss Tate, at three in the morning. Perfect. Of course. Well, Miss Crack of Dawn Tate, you and I, unbeknownst to me until right this minute, have somewhat less than fifteen hours to pack up your lab and our quarters and go. Can I get you some coffee?"

"Coffee!" Margaret glared. "No! You can fix this!"

"The lease is yours, not mine."

"But! I can't--it's going to change the world, Andrew!"

Andrew leaned back against the desk. "Miss Tate, I don't really think we have a choice. We can stand here and be unhappy about it and not have time to pack, or we can get started. Look, the grant still has a couple of months on it. We just have to find another slot, is all." He pulled out the collapsed suitcases from under her bed and started uncollapsing them. 

"It took a year to get _this_ one."

"Okay, well, maybe I can get an extension on the grant?" 

"Hartwell said this is the last one he's supporting." Margaret recalled the conversation vividly. The old man wasn't that convinced there was a real demand for AI interfaces to help neuro patients with physical control of their bodies, or that there was a way to build one that would help with a wide enough variety of cases to produce cheaply, and he'd been 'humoring' her for three years now. It was a good product, damn it, but if she couldn't make the thing stop eating cerebrospinal fluid for lunch, it was never even going to get a trial. "He wasn't kidding."

Andrew frowned and started shoving clothes into bags. "Well that sucks. Well, we'll think of something. We have a few hours while we pack, right? So, how--" 

"Everything all right in here?" The girl from that exercise group (Jane? Mary? Kathy?) tapped on the doorframe as she spoke. 

"Hi, Kate. Fine. We just had a slight lease snafu, but it's fine." Andrew smiled. "I guess we'll be out of your hair this evening."

 _Kate_ , right. "We're not in her _hair_ , Andrew, unless you've been... dallying."

"Dallying?" Andrew shook his head. "Not a chance. No time." He shrugged as he looked at Kate, who was checking out his bare legs and had an eyebrow raised, but he seemed not to notice. "We just lost track of the date, is all, and here we are in the middle of the night just realizing. We're going to..." He glanced at Margaret and shrugged. "We're going to a smaller private facility in a higher orbit. It's just that we meant to go later, but it turns out we need to go now."

Margaret wasn't sure what smaller facility there was, but it sounded better than being kicked out with nowhere to go, so she nodded. "Yes, and I need to get dressed before we pack all my clothes. Ugh." She waved both hands at Kate to see if that would induce her to leave, and grabbed the nearest pants and socks.

\--

Andrew wasn't really sure what had prompted him to say they were going to the cabin, except that Margaret had looked kind of crazy-desperate and he was a sucker, but now that it was out there, it was obvious Margaret had every expectation that's what they were doing, never mind that there were a hundred problems with the idea. Not least…

"Miss Tate?"

"What?" Margaret had her hands full of carefully stacked boards to place into stability boxes for transport. 

"It does have a cutting-edge lab and all, but there is sort of one very small problem with the private facility."

"What's that?" She lowered the first board into the box.

"Um, it won't let you in if you're not one of two things: approved by my parents, who are the registered controllers, but even though I'm sure they would approve in the long run, stil, that would involve you going and meeting them which is a whole other timesuck--"

"No. Option two?"

"Orrr you have to be family." He finished uploading the code and schematics into his own backup cloud, which was, honestly, probably twenty times more reliable than the shitty file system Hartwell had given them (and, if this was the last grant he was supporting, then damn it, the grant would run out before two years were up, and that was going to mess with Andrew's plans, a lot) and set them to expire locally, leaving no trace of their IP on board.

"Family." She set down the rest of the boards one by one, then looked up. "So we list me as your sister."

"Uh. There's an AI that runs the place. It'll check records."

She frowned. "Where the hell is there a lab with that kind of requirement? Fine, so we finagle the records."

"It won't buy it because it does, of course, know my parents."

"Cousin?"

"Same problem."

"So, how exactly do you plan to get us in? Oh, wait. Oh, hell no."

"Yeah, we'd have to get actually, legally, married." Andrew ran his hand through his hair. "I know, it's absurd, but the AI will buy honeymoon, and once we're in, we're golden."

"Oh, married. Is that all?" She went back to packing like that wasn't an issue worth five seconds of considering.

Andrew stared. "Wait, what? What were you saying hell no to, then?" 

"I thought you were going to tell me you'd go in and report back, make changes I said, report back, you know. I'd get stuck in orbit, or worse, on Earth."

"Ugh, no. I could do that, but I'm pretty sure the schedule would kill both of us."

"It's worth it!"

"Uh…huh. Okay, so we have to come up with a pre-nup and also get married here on the station--there's a captain, so I'm about eighty percent sure the whole maritime wedding thing applies--"

"Pre-nup?" Margaret waved a hand. "It's not going to be worth anything until way after we annul."

Andrew paused for a second until he realized Margaret meant her work, which… wasn't, at all, what he was getting at, but explaining was going to be awkward. "No, I mean, …okay, just, just in case, okay?"

"Fine, whatever. Did you get the failure holograms? I wasn't done taking them apart."

"Yeah, got 'em. Do we need the casings? They're pretty generic."

"We should take them, just in case."

"Also, the AI will notice if I call you Miss Tate."

She scowled. "Fine. You can call me Margaret while we're there."

"All right. I'll start on the documents, Margaret, while you work on backing up and burning any files you saved where I can't get them."

Margaret's scowl deepened at the name, but she did start clicking through directories and ten seconds later she was busily assigning deletion algorithms.

\--

The ceremony, once they got that far, was ridiculously easy to accomplish and took five minutes. He, Andrew, took her, Margaret, she, Margaret, took him, Andrew, blah blah blah. Margaret wanted to shake the 'captain' of NSRC-3 for even making them repeat everything, but it was twenty minutes until the next shuttle going down, and since they were then going to need to grab one going up again immediately, well.

Fine, so she took Andrew for her wedded husband. While wearing mismatches socks and a pen in her hair because they'd had to sign about a thousand documents first. Ugh, what a pain. 

She was definitely going to be looking into what her options were regarding an assistant who hadn't even made sure their housing was secure for the duration of the grant. Honestly. Meanwhile, though, at least he'd made up for it a little with this whole family vacation site or whatever it was he kept telling her it was.

They made the shuttle with three minutes to spare, and Margaret was even mostly sure all her materials have made it with them.

Mostly.

"So," Andrew said as she sat down in their shared little booth on the shuttle. "The AI is definitely going to ask you questions."

"What? Like, about my work?"

"No. About me."

"What? Why? I thought you said it knows you."

Andrew sighed. "It does. Just, it's programmed for suspicion, so if it thinks you aren't actually my wife, it might try to evict us. Which means probably you should learn something about me."

"Like what? I mean, you're my assistant. What else do I need to know?"

"My middle name? What I like for breakfast? Whether I have a PhD?"

"Your middle name is somewhere in your file. Something with a P, maybe. You drink coffee for breakfast. You're my assistant, so a PhD isn't really a question."

"Ummmmno. My middle name is Mark, I have coffee when you have coffee, yes, but what I _like_ for breakfast is a mushroom omelet with wheat toast and OJ, and I do have a PhD, in cybernetics and neuroscience. My position with you is and has been a foot in the door--not to stealing your work, which I am saying because I know you have a thing about that, but to my own avenues of research."

"Uh-huh." She arched a brow at him like he was being ridiculous.

"I went to Brown for my bachelor's, and then to Columbia with a fellowship at MIT. I was a postdoc back in New York, and I spent a year at Wisconsin-Madison working in retrovirals before I took the internship with you. I know you think I'm your secretary, but I'm not. And in case you're about to flip out--"

Margaret was, actually, a little freaked to learn all this in one fell swoop, because what the hell, she'd just _legally married him_ , but how did he know that? She was sure she looked calm because no one ever got anywhere by looking like a lunatic.

"--I will point out that I had you sign a pre-nup, and I signed it too. Your work is yours, but you just need to know this stuff, is all. Because you're coming to my house, now."

Margaret took a deep breath. "Mushroom omelets. Not a fan."

"Well, now _that's_ just fine, because you're not required to like what I like, just to mostly _know_ me."

"Yeah, well, shouldn't you have to know _me_ , too?" Margaret raised her chin.

"I do. I've been sent on every errand in the world. I know what brand of tampon you prefer and what to do when your breasts are tender. I think I can convince an AI I know your secrets."

Margaret wrinkled her nose. "Well, that's unfair. I'll have enough to do, with the research."

"I know. But I'm just saying, now, during our downtime, is when to learn."

Margaret had to agree, there was something to that, even if she didn't want to know any more than she already did. 

Still, the whole thing felt pretty unfair.

\--

Andrew stopped trying to shove more information into Margaret's head as they approached the cabin, and resigned himself instead to convincing the AI he was a besotted idiot. 

Margaret probably wouldn’t notice, what with how she didn't seem to think he was being honest about his credentials anyway, and if it tarnished his credibility with his family, well. Six more months with Hartwell and Jackson, and he could move on, no need to invoke family interference in anything, anymore.

So, since he'd gotten about three hours of sleep last night, and been up for nineteen, he leaned back in the wide seat (first class; he usually didn't choose options for luxury, but in this case, he'd taken what was available and tolerated the complaint about wasting resources) and put his head against the window for a nap.

When he woke two hours later to the soothing voice of the attendant stating their location, Margaret was leaned against him, also sound asleep, and he grinned. She was so quiet when she slept.

Also, she smelled nice.

Not that that mattered. 

"Margaret," he said, nudging her. "Honey, wake up."

She opened her eyes, then narrowed them at him. "Did you--"

"It's the first day of the rest of our lives together, so yes, I did call ahead for champagne," Andrew said. He grinned broadly over her head at the attendant, who beamed back at him.

"Oh. Yay." Margaret wasn't, in Andrew's opinion, a very good actress, but it didn't matter; the attendant had moved on as they docked to debark the two of them.

The process only took a few minutes, as the luggage preceded them through the airlock and then it was only a matter of long enough to turn all the tumblers and get them through.

Andrew stood with her in the spherical room that still looked like airlocks had looked for decades. When the light started moving to green, he looked at Margaret. "I probably ought to carry you across," he said.

"Carry--oh. Right." Margaret shook her head. "This is ridiculous."

"And necessary," Andrew returned. "Try to look like you don't hate me."

Margaret stepped in close and let him pick her up, resting her head on his shoulder again.

She still smelled nice.

\--

Somehow, when Andrew had mentioned an AI in the facility, Margaret really had not expected a hologram of a short, elderly woman.

Based on his response, Andrew hadn't either. "Uh. Grammy?" He set Margaret down, but left his arm around her waist. "We'd have called ahead, but--"

"I've reviewed the license and ceremony," his apparent grandmother said. "Your mother is going to kill you. Also, how do you like my new look?" She spun around and held her hands out. "My software package has been updated to include the likeness and a number of personality traits."

"Oh." Andrew looked at Margaret. "Grammy died last summer. Apparently Mom wasn't ready to let go."

"I… see?" Margaret watched the little old lady, who seemed to be the AI they'd mentioned, give another little twirl, and wondered if maybe she'd hit her head.

"So, I'll show you to the blue suite, then, if that will do?" 

"What should I call you?" Margaret blurted. "Uh, Andrew never said if you had a name?"

Grammy beamed. "Aren't you sweet to ask?" She looked at Andrew. "I never thought you had it in you. You should both just call me Grammy."

Margaret didn't feel comfortable with that, but wasn't sure how to get out of it, so she nodded and stuck out her hand. "I'm Margaret. Tate. I mean, Paxton, obviously, but it's been Tate, and I've never given much thought to changing it. If that's okay?"

"You should do what's right for you," Grammy said. "You might surprise yourself."

Andrew leaned in. "The blue suite?"

"It's been the tradition," Grammy replied. "It's cozy."

Margaret gave a sharp nod. "Well, we like traditions, right, _honey_? Lead on, Grammy." The whole situation was absurd and she might yet wake up and find it had all been a terrible dream, but meanwhile, she figured she might as well play the part and find out whether the lab facilities here would even meet her needs. Speaking of which, "Can you put our luggage in the lab?"

Andrew nodded. "You don't need to unpack or anything, but it'll need the grav-lab and everything will need secured."

Grammy gave a sharp nod and started leading them to the suite.

\--

"Andrew!" The whole wall lit up as they entered the room, and Margaret spun, then glanced back at Andrew, who closed his eyes. 

"Mom," he said. "So, I was going to call, but--"

"Grammy emailed us." 

"Of course she did. What happened to the Jeevesbot?"

"He's in storage. Guess what?"

"What?"

"We're coming up next week! We'd come sooner, but obviously you're on your honeymoon."

Andrew forced a smile. "Great!"

"Meanwhile, we'll leave you to it, but could we meet your young lady?"

Andrew's dad stuck his face into the frame. "You did do the paperwork, right? No offense, girlie, but a guy can't be too careful."

"Pop, it's fine. Don't worry, I know the rules. Mom, this is Margaret. Margaret, Mom."

"Margaret… your boss is named Margaret, isn’t she? What a coincidence! And what a nice balance, one you love to counteract that one."

"Uh. Right, so this is Margaret, who has been my boss, and we're between a couple of things, so the time was right, and I know we haven't talked in a while but as you say, honeymoon, gotta go." Andrew ran his hand over a control panel in the wall and cut the connection. "Sorry about that."

"Paperwork? Also, you told your mother about me? And it was bad?" Margaret looked like her head was spinning, which was completely fair, and Andrew counted to five before answering.

"This isn't a lab. Exactly. It's sort of our summer home, which _has_ a lab. It honestly does have everything you need, because it has everything _I'd_ need, because my mother indulges my silly academic side, so the work we planned to do while we're here isn't totally out the window. Paperwork was the pre-nup. Pop's reminded me of the requirement every day of my adult life. I told my mother about you before the station. You have to admit you're a little needy. New problem: if the AI is programmed after Grammy, she's probably going to accidentally pop in on us at any time, and that means we need to be careful how things look."

What he didn't want to say out loud, because _artificial intelligence, might be listening anywhere_ was, we need to share a bed. But 'be careful' should work for either meaning, right? Margaret was smart, just not nice.

She gave him a look that said she got it, then took a look around the suite, with its broad windows and view of Earth, its spacious, for space, bath, and its large and comfortable bed. "Well, then I guess we'll just have to make the best of our opportunities, won't we?" She kicked off her shoes, went to the bed and shoved two of the abundant pillows down the middle, took off the cardigan she'd traveled in, and slid into one side. A moment later she squirmed and tossed her pants out the side of the blankets. "Stay long enough for, you know, then go see about the lab, maybe?"

He rolled his eyes. "Of course." He toed off his shoes as well, folded her sweater and pants onto the chair next to her, and got in the other side of the bed. By the time he got there, she was asleep, so he shrugged and closed his eyes as well. The lab could wait. Plus, there were more things he needed to tell her about it anyway.

\--

Margaret woke up slowly, puzzled by the puffy blankets and warmth against her. It felt nice, but--oh! She sat up quickly to the sound of the speaker. "Good morning, lovebirds! Are you decent?"

She looked around wildly. "Andrew?"

"Mmmph?" He sat up next to her, bare-chested, hair hilarious. "What? Oh, we can--"

"I think your grandmother's coming in."

"Shit." He felt around and yanked one pillow out of the bed and tossed it to the floor, then scooted closer to her. "Sorry."

She lay back in his arms, stiff, and stifled a yelp when he pulled her in snug against him (and his extremely obvious erection and his bunched up shirt) and bundled them up in the blanket together. He had the lab and they had their work to get through, and getting kicked out would just screw everything up.

"Good morning!" Grammy faded into view slightly above them and off to Margaret's side.

Margaret smiled at her. "Hi. We were just talking about getting up and checking into the lab, weren't we?"

Andrew nodded, his face rubbing against her hair. "Yep. Lab. Up." He nuzzled against her. "What did you need, Grammy?"

"Oh, nothing. I was just checking on you two. You know, I remember _my_ honeymoon. It was a _wonderful_ time. Warm beach, waves, sand in uncomfortable places--do you know, we made lo--"

Andrew put up a hand. "Grammy. No. That's probably not a story Grandpa would want you to share."

"Oh, I wasn't talking about him. I was talking about my honeymoon with Seymour. We never married, of course, because he didn't want to sign the forms and all, but we took a honeymoon anyway."

"Seymour?"

Andrew groaned. "Our chef. Grammy, I did not need to know you and Seymour had a fling." Even though she didn't know Seymour and had little experience with grandparents over all, Margaret had to agree. On the other hand, it did seem to be helping with the erection problem quite a bit.

"I thought you'd like it," Grammy said. "It gives us something in common. You married your boss, and I was screw--"

"Yep, nope, didn't need to know." Andrew set his hand down uncomfortably close to Margaret's breast. "But thanks for sharing. Also, if you didn't need anything, maybe you could give us some privacy? You know, to get dressed?"

"Oh, is that what you'll be doing?" Grammy winked. "I'll keep breakfast warm in the easy lounge." The hologram faded out, and then, just as Margaret was freeing herself from the blankets, popped back in. "Oh, and dear, I know you were worried about your little experiments, so you'll want to know that your lab is ready when you are, and we've generated a dozen boards for you to work from for now."

Then the hologram went away again.

Margaret turned over. "We? Who's we, that generated--what is she doing with my work?"

"As far as I know, she means the station bots. I told her not to mess with stuff, and if it was Jeevesbot, that would have been that, but apparently the--Jesus, Mom, what is this even? Apparently the Grammygram is not your standard station AI." He shuddered. "In a lot of ways. I didn't quite count on that."

"I got that. Also, what's with grinding yourself up against me? Honestly, you do know this isn't that kind of thing, right?"

"Seriously? Have you ever slept with a guy before?"

"I don’t think that's any of your business."

"No, I mean, have you ever woken up in the presence of a guy? Because that's just a thing. In the morning. That happens. It wasn't about you."

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever. We should get up. And no more erection."

"No ma'am. No more erections. All business. Yes ma'am." Andrew rolled away from her and stood, leaving her staring at the back of his hiked up t-shirt and boxers.

All right, maybe sleeping pressed up against that wasn't _so_ bad. If she had to sleep pressed up against _someone_. Which, she had to admit, felt nicer than it had the last time she'd checked.

But enough of that.

\--

"I think they did more than put everything out," Margaret said, looking through the glass.

"Probably. Um, there's something else, before we go in--"

"Oh, _now_ what?" Margaret snapped. "What else could you possibly need to tell me, besides that we need to get married, you're richer than God and working for me for fun, and by the way, your dead elderly grandmother is going to be popping into our room without much warning?"

Andrew shrugged. If that was going to be her attitude, he was okay with letting her go with trial and error. "Nothing. It’s fine."

"Good." Margaret punched at the door controls, then turned back when they didn't work for her. "Would you mind?"

He stepped forward. "Grammy?"

"Yes, dear?" Grammy's head swum into view mid-air in front of him.

"Give Margaret lab access?"

"All of it?"

"Of course. She's my wife."

"I forgot." Grammy smiled sweetly. "Margaret, please lay your hand on the indicated panel." A frame lit within the glass, and the outline of a hand showed palely in the box.

Margaret stepped forward and placed her hand on the glass, which glowed briefly, and then she yelped and jerked her hand back. "What the hell?"

"Blood sample, dear. Don't worry, if you're pregnant I'll never tell."

Andrew stepped between them in time to catch Margaret's swung hand across his back. "Wow, Grammy, invasive, much? You keep the DNA on file, but no testing for anything we don't explicitly use for access. Since I'm sure you never pregnancy-tested _me_ for any such thing, none of that."

Grammy sighed and nodded, then blinked out.

Andrew stepped away from the door so Margaret could open it, then, as she passed through the tiny lobby, remembered that he hadn't told her--

"Andrew!" Margaret screeched as she floated off the floor and flailed in space. "What--!"

He groaned and went in after her, grabbing a hand-rail and reaching for her to pull her back. "Sorry. Sorry, that was what I was going to say before, but you were so--"

"So it's my fault you knew and didn't mention this?"

"Sorry." Andrew helped her get a grip on the rail for herself, then stayed behind her back to the lobby. "I never liked the whole gravline thing, so we didn't install it. Mag shoes are in the bench."

"I hate you."

"I know."

\--

Margaret shoved her shoes into the magnetic clamps and stomped back into the lab. She knew that on the one hand, she really ought to just be glad there was a place with a zero-G lab that even remotely suited her needs, but damn it, he could have told her before she went looking like an idiot.

She started at the boards, which, to her surprise were actually quite good. Well, that was something.

"What can I do to help?" Andrew asked.

"Go back to the blue room?"

"Hey, yeah, I know. But still--

"Fine. Bring up the last run and see where it failed. You have a million degrees, so you oughtta use them."

"Happy to." Andrew clumped over to the secondary bay and started pulling up files, separating them into categories on the screens and projecting where she could see them as well as he could. "This one's got a bug at line 20," he said. "I think there's a mechanical thing too, though."

She looked up and frowned. "I don't see the bug."

"It's in the order. Look." He highlighted the section, then went and started opening schematics. "See, it's sending this guy, and--"

"Oh! I see it." Margaret walked up behind him and started fiddling with the schematic. "If I just parameterize the Dierbach colony and then string this--"

"Oh, sure." Andrew grinned. "Good call."

He really was kind of appealing when he smiled; she wasn't sure how she'd never seen that before, although, come to think of it, he hadn't really smiled much before. Well, that wasn't exactly her fault, but she did feel like she really wanted to see it again.

"That's going to work," Andrew said. "I mean, maybe it's not the whole fix, but I'm pretty sure it'll make a huge difference. Plus, I love that it'll be able to grow with a patient? I mean, a lot of times there's one neuro issue, and then something else comes up as time goes on. Probably because the longer patients live, the more time there is for something new. But not having to get a new implant for a second situation will be great."

"The onboard AI should be able to accept additional programming," Margaret said. "It has to, in order to shut it down as additional treatments come up, so it might as well be able to flexibly respond to just about anything. Ideally, it will even be able to adapt if a patient contracts some other kind of disease and maintain adequate function that the patient can get to treatment before anything goes bad."

"Good point." Andrew took out a board and started transferring the new code onto it, then watched the bots start manufacturing the medium.

"Wait, I'm not sure if that's ready!"

"Upside to being, what did you say? Richer than God? I have the bots to make more, if this is a mess."

"Well, okay, why the hell didn't we do this before?" See, and there he was back to unappealing.

He blushed.

Baaack to appealing. God.

"Because I like to not take a ton of advantage of having money, and it's stupid, I know, but until there was an emergency and you actually needed me--"

" _I_ needed you?"

"Maybe. Shut up. Anyway, until then, I kind of left it off the table. Like, totally off it."

"You're weird."

"I've been told. Um, so're you."

Margaret grinned and sent a slightly-revised schematic to the bots.

Being married to a billionaire apparently had perks.

\--

They were on round six--two trials at a time, and more progress in each than they'd made in months; Andrew thought maybe there was a psych paper in this on the value of cooperation--when the alarm went off. He looked up. "What the hell? Grammy?"

Her face appeared on a screen, no hologram. "Trouble in the exhaust string. Power to the laaabbbbbbs--" Her face vanished just as the lights dimmed and a cloud of greenish dust spewed out of the manufacturing belt enclosure. Andrew felt his pulse triple; the waste product should have been through a purification process before it ever got on their skin, and while it wasn't like they were actually bathed in the stuff, without the power pulling crap out of the air, there was truly no telling how much exposure would be dangerous.

"Margaret, get in the tube." He pointed. "Shit, we should have done lab safety first: Decontam is the blue chain. Go."

"Uh, you?"

"Only one unit. I'm right behind you. Turn off your mag clamps when you get there."

Margaret turned and started for the tube. "Wait, will we both fit?"

Andrew coughed. "If we’re really friendly."

"We're married. Get in the tube."

He turned off his clamps and jumped, pulling himself on the wall handles to catch up with her as she go to the door. She jumped in after him, waited for the lock to cycle (and yeah, they were really going to have to be friendly here) and yanked the handle.

\--

The decontam sequence on any station was a hassle, but there were actually at least six kinds on the market, and Margaret had never seen this one in action.

Which meant, when bots crawled up their bodies, cutting off clothes and moving their arms and legs to make sure everything was bare to the skin, she was a little startled. "Friendly, huh?"

"Married?" Andrew shrugged. "I forgot we'd put in the Meier-Franklin when the Caldwell unit was recalled.

The bots retracted, and a chilly mist filled the tube. Margaret shuddered and tried to ignore the way her nipples hardened and brushed his chest.

"This is pretty awkward, huh?" he asked. 

"Kind of.

"Sorry. It's only a couple of minutes."

Margaret wasn't sure that was a huge consolation. "No touching."

"No kidding."

"Just, I mean, you can't help it, but try."

"I know. You keep your hands to yourself, too."

"I will."

\--

"Hello, dears!" The Grammy hologram was standing outside the door when the tube opened, and Andrew narrowed his eyes. "I thought you lost power."

"Oh, I did! But, it's all better now!" She smiled. "I've run you a hot bath in your suite. Come along, now."

"Uh, Grammy?" Andrew reached for her as though grabbing would work, and then remembered that really didn't work with holograms. "Robes?"

"It's just us here, dear. No one to see but us chickens, so we might as well just hurry along."

"I'd still rather have a robe," Margaret said.

"I'll warm one for you for after the bath." Grammy faded out.

"I think your grandmother is trying to set us up." Margaret said. 

"Why? We're married."

"I know. It's weird. Also, it's still freezing in here. Crap." Margaret looked around for anything whatsoever she could put on, but nothing that was visible in the room was even made of cloth, and pawing through the drawers just in case seemed like a pointless delay. Finally, she threw up her hands and Andrew followed her out of the room. At least the view was nice.

\--

"Here we are!" Grammy pointed them to the bathtub, brimming with steaming water, and then gestured to the gentle spray of perfume wafting down toward the water. 

The tub was huge, but not so huge they wouldn't be touching, and Andrew sighed. "Grammy, could we just go with something simpler?"

"But this is romantic!" Grammy frowned suddenly. "You two have only been married for a couple of days. You're not having _troubles_ , are you?"

"Nope!" Margaret stepped forward and into the tub. No way she was letting the AI kick her off the station. Cabin. Whatever. "Come on, honey. Maybe after this we can get Grammy to make us omelets. I could sure use an omelet. Also, holy shit this water feels good."

Andrew closed his eyes for a minute and followed her into the tub.

Grammy smiled down at them just long enough to be creepy, then lowered the lights and put on soft music. And vanished.

"Your grandmother is weird," Margaret said.

"I wish I could say it was a new feature, introduced in the memory upload, but it's really, really not." Andrew shifted in the water, trying not to bump her any more than he could help.

"Oh, for heaven's sake. I already had your erection up my ass--"

"Not actually. I mean, I think I would have noticed that."

"Yeah, close enough. Just, here, turn--" Margaret gestured, and Andrew turned to put his back against one side of the tub, and Margaret came to sit between his legs, leaning back. "But remember. No erections.

"Yeah, not in my control, exactly, but it's not like I'm doing anything about it."

Margaret thought probably she shouldn’t trust that, but somehow, she felt surprisingly safe. And warm.

And perfumed.

\--

"Andrew, look." Margaret pointed at a screen in the bedroom. "Look, it's through the first phase of the trial." She watched the numbers run for a few minutes and turned to him. "Look!"

He stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets. "Margaret."

"It's working!" It was kind of amazing; they hadn't been able to return to the lab, and this was the set they'd put into the medium just a couple of minutes before the alarms went off.

"Yeah, about that." He sighed. "My dad's here, and we have a problem."

"We do?"

"We do. He apparently registered the lab equipment to his corporation, and since you're not on the list of exceptions, he thinks he owns the rights."

" _WHAT._ "

"I said he's wrong, because I'm on the list and you're my wife, but--"

"But nothing. What the fuck, Andrew?"

"I'm working on it. Meanwhile, I think you should shut that sim down. It's your call, but I'm afraid if it finishes running before the lawyers finish thinking, the patent will say the wrong thing."

"Oh, you're working on it."

"I am, actually. I'm hoping not to have to defy Dad directly--for all he seems like a sweetheart, he can be kind of a shark, but if I have to, I will."

"For me."

Andrew twisted up his mouth, then nodded. "For you. For us."

"So, what, we find another lab to go to?"

"I do have independent money. We could."

"Why would you?"

Grammy's face appeared in the sim numbers.

"I agree with him, dear."

"Oh, go to hell. You work for the guy trying to steal my work."

Grammy smiled. "No, I don't. I work for his wife." She leaned in, a hologram coming out of the screen, and added conspiratorially, "And I've been watching you. He likes you. You like him. You could do worse."

She popped back into the screen and added, "Plus, he's right. The man can be a shark. Kill the sim and let Andrew help you."

Margaret shook her head. "No way."

"Then I will." Andrew leaned in and tapped a series of commands. 

"You--what!" Margaret picked up the first thing she could lay hands on, a pillow, and whacked him with it. He picked up another and hit her back.

Grammy reappeared on the screen, watched them fight until they collapsed together, giggling, and went to report back to the Paxtons.

\--

"I'm not going."

"You have to. If I leave without you, it's clear we're not what we said. In which case my parents will--"

"God damn it." Margaret yanked at her own hair and leaned forward to put her face in her hands. "I hate you."

"I know. Sadly, I kind of like you, so if you really want to stay, we can, but then I don't know how to fix the problem."

She shook her head. "Damn it. Restart the sim."

"What? Why?"

"Because you're taking on your dad and I hate everything and I think your Grammy is right."

"…About?"

Margaret sighed. "Us. I could do worse. You probably couldn't, but for the moment, let's just try to make things work. If nothing else, my name will be on the science, and the breakthrough is too important to leave until we come up with a better plan."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Seriously?" Grammy asked, showing up on the screen over the coffee pot.

"Damn it. SERIOUSLY. Now get out."

Grammy faded, and Andrew took a couple of steps toward her. "And you'll stay? Because, I mean, I bet there are refinements, and--"

"I'll stay. But you should put me on the damn list. Because next time, the patent's mine, and I don't think--" She cut off as Andrew stepped closer yet and leaned in to pull her up to stand chest to chest with him. 

"Margaret?"

"Yeah?"

"I've wanted to say this a lot of times, but now I mean it. Shut up." He kissed her to punctuate his words, then pulled away, then stopped, came back, and kissed her again.

Grammy checked in, smiled, and locked the door.


End file.
